- The Board of Tea Experts, established on March 2, 1897, is finally being mothballed.
- Deborah Laufer has filed more than 600 different lawsuits —typically against small hotels — and Laufer accuses them of failing to comply with the federal disabilities law. Will the Supreme Court shut her down?
- Yglesias: Loneliness isn’t aloneness. And contra Nicholas Kristof, it is highly correlated with low incomes.
- Tyler Cowen: ten ideas on reducing the number of single parent families.
Category: Health Economics & Costs
Monday Links
- Health gains from key prescription drugs.
- Steve Henke, et. al., skewer a new Royal Society report on Covid-19.
- Health Affairs study: employers lack leverage to negotiate lower prices. Have they never heard of reference pricing?
- CDC: we are losing the battle against obesity. I thought we lost it a long time ago.
- Inequities at the doctors office: is it because the patients don’t speak up for themselves?
Saturday Links
- Patience is correlated with more success in school.
- “Aspirations cannot become law.” Sen. Bill Cassidy on Bernie Sanders’ latest health care proposal.
- Peter Nelson: How to make price transparency better.
- Is a female takeover of elite occupations taking place?
- Penn Wharton model: The federal government’s unfunded liability is $244.8 billion.
Hospital Online Price Estimators Don’t Match Phone Quotes
Hospitals make it notoriously difficult to know the price prior to a service. Prices are hard to obtain and often meaningless when disclosed. Indeed, there isn’t one price but many prices depending upon who the payer is. There is a different price for BlueCross, Aetna, Cigna and most other health plans. There is the chargemaster…